The focus of this thesis is on the vertical integration of mechatronics in the mechanical engineering curriculum at Virginia Tech. It reports the details of an experimental strategy to integrate mechatronics at an early level in the education of engineers. A proposal was submitted to and accepted by the NSF/SUCCEED coalition to fund this experiment. Through this assistance, the experiment of vertically integrating mechatronics was initiated. The methodology in which it was integrated is presented -- through optional participation in a sophomore design class and a required design project in a junior system dynamics course. The material developed for the vertical integration of mechatronics is in the appendices. This material is appropriate for other institutions to use to vertically integrate mechatronics into their curriculums, which is part of the NSF/SUCCEED coalition's initiative. For the sophomore class, ME 2024, Introduction to Engineering Design and Economics, selected sections were exposed to the concepts of mechatronic design, along with the normal course material. Students in the mechatronic sections were given an opportunity to incorporate the use of a custom-built VT Project Box and the PIC Visual Development (PVD) software, both of which were created specifically for the task of vertical integration of mechatronics. Throughout the semester, the students were given several demonstrations of mechatronic systems through the use of the project box and software. Many students decided to implement mechatronic concepts in their final design projects. A smaller number of students made a decision to use the project box and software to develop a prototype of their final design project. Candid remarks about the students experiences, obtained from a survey at the semester's end, indicated that the vertical integration of mechatronics was a motivational feature in the second-year curriculum. For the junior class, ME 3514, System Dynamics, all sections were exposed to the concepts of mechatronics, along with the normal course material. The students were required to acquire steady-state velocity data from a DC motor and create an analytical model of the motor to predict the steady-state velocity for a given duty cycle of a pulse-width modulated controller. After the collection of the data and the creation of the analytical model, the students compared the results of simulations to the actual data collected, and report the comparison to the instructor in a memorandum. The collection of the steady-state velocity data was accomplished using the PVD software and the VT Project Box. The essentials of mechatronics was communicated to the students in two lectures, and the students gained hands-on experience with mechatronics through the use of the project box and the software. The lecture material covered the basics of mechatronics, the Mechatronics course at Virginia Tech, and detailed information about the design project. The assessment of the vertical integration of mechatronics into this junior course was accomplished by surveying all of the students in the course. The results of the survey indicated that the inclusion of mechatronics material increased the students understanding of the course material and also increased their interest in mechatronics. / Master of Science

Tesis para optar al grado de Magíster en Economía / We use a panel database of the universe of firms constructed from Chilean IRS, to study the evolution of firms, in a sense of destruction, creation and survival. As expected, larger and more productive firms are less likely to be destroyed; and (also as expected) they are less likely to be created than smaller and less productive firms. However, when we analyze young firms, the most succeded are those who made an important investment in his first year of life, and the productivity will be relevant depending of the sector. So there’s some evidence about the entrepreneurship and the stock of capital they make and how is that related with his relevance in an emerging market. We have shown that “financial dependence” has different meaning for smaller firms, as reflected in a significant difference in sign of the corresponding parameter. For them it is an indicator of ”financial constraint” and acts in our regressions as a predictor of firm destruction, also a stronger predictor of firm creation smaller firms, acting like a “financial access”. but does not affect the chances of survive.

The overall aim of this study has been to deepen the understanding of the phenomenon ofboy’s school dropout and whether there are other explanations than sociological ones. Thestudy has focused on what students and teachers perceive as factors for success and failure inschool and if there are gender differences. Furthermore,the study has targeted students andteacher's perceptions of pedagogical structure design on teaching and examination forms. Themethod has been mixed; both qualitative and quantitative with an abductive approach -discovery logic and hypothesis testing. The empirical data of the study consists of two parts, aqualitative one with four teacher interviews and a mixed one - both qualitative andquantitative - with 100 student questionnaires. The theory was critical and based on Bernsteinwho stated that school has its own acoustics. This study has confirmed Bernstein’s theory ofpedagogy and his concept of grammar. The result showed that there are biological as well associological explanations related to success or failure in school. The results also showedsignificance in the gender difference between which form of teaching boys and girls prefer,girls prefer more than boys to read and write. According to the interview responses of theteachers the result was that boys are more immature and practical than girls, who are moretheoretical. Boys seem to also have a larger memory while girls think a step further.Furthermore, the results showed that girls struggle more and are better at analyzing, boys putthemselves lower and settle for a passing grade. Boys are not as literate as girls and there is adifference between the sexes.It has also emerged in the study that girls are treated differently.

Improving Student Knowledge through Experiential Learning â A Hands-On Statics Lab at Virginia Tech By: Christopher G. Alcorn It has been well documented that humans learn better through a combination of hearing, seeing, and hands-on experience than through hearing and seeing alone. Despite these findings, the majority of college instruction is through lecture. This research seeks to improve the quality of structural education for students in Building Construction, Architecture, and Engineering by allowing them to test theoretical structural concepts in a hands-on, lab environment that parallels their statics lecture class. The paper provides a background on the experiential learning approach, presents examples of others engaged in similar research, discusses the details of developing the experience-based lab class, describes the labs and their structure, and summarizes the outcome of this model class. Lessons learned, including which type of student might benefit most from the experiential learning format and shortcomings of applying the experiential learning model are discussed along with recommendations for future work. An appendix at the end of the paper displays the workbook developed to teach the class as well as pictures of the labs in action and costs of lab equipment. This project is a part of a multi-college initiative at Virginia Tech to develop a three-lab sequence to parallel Statics, Mechanics of Deformable Bodies, and Mechanical Behavior. / Master of Science

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<p>Mathematics departments at Canadian universities accept yearly many international graduate students, who are aiming for the MSc and PhD degrees offered by those departments. This study seeks to understand the difficulties faced by some of those students at English-speaking Canadian universities. Its main aim is to determine why some international graduate students struggle with mathematics courses at a graduate level, even though their academic achievement in their home countries may have been high. In this study we want to know whether this problem is related to language barriers, to the time gap between the last acquired degree and the current one, to the educational systems to which students have been exposed in their countries of origin, or to other reasons. I interviewed twelve international graduate students fromMcMasterUniversityandUniversityofGuelphas well as three faculty members from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics atMcMasterUniversity. The students who participated come from different countries:Russia,Belarus,Slovakia,Pakistan,India,Bangladesh,Turkey,Iran,China, andSaudi Arabia. While some of those countries seem to have similar cultures and life styles, others are distinctly different. The interviews helped me to draw a deeper perspective about the problem by exploring the reasons that hamper some of those students from succeeding in their courses, and asking the participants to provide their suggestions to other students and faculty members on how to eliminate these obstacles. This study helps to improve the academic graduate programs of the department of mathematics by adjusting to students’ needs and enhancing their learning outcomes. It also suggests to international graduate students to discover and examine their weaknesses and prepare themselves academically to fulfill the requirements of their programs.</p> / Master of Science (MSc)

Even with extensive literacy research, routines, and policy modifications, many elementary students are not provided with the needed tools to develop independent literacy skills. Therefore, the purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine what independent literacy behaviors are developing in first through fourth grade students to determine whether the Daily 5 framework is developing the desired independent literacy skills in those students. Based on Vygotsky's social development theory, the Daily 5 literacy routine teaches students five essential habits to develop independent literacy abilities across various grade levels. This qualitative study's research questions were developed to examine what independent literacy behaviors have been observed by teachers and how student learning is reflected based on Vygotsky's zone of proximal development. The study included nine participants comprised of teachers and parents of students at the study site. The data collected through open-ended interviews, email questionnaires, lesson plans from teachers, and documentation were then coded using Atlas.ti. Emergent themes were identified through data analysis, and the findings were validated through member checking, triangulation, and researcher reflexivity. The findings revealed that while some independent literacy behaviors are reported, additional support is still needed. The findings led to the development of a professional development project centered on literacy professional development activities that build collaboration. This study and project facilitates positive social change by defining how the Daily 5 routine is promoting independent literacy skills at the research site, which builds communities of readers and positive reading experiences that circulate within the school and home.

The purpose of this study was to create a deeper understanding for, and shine a light on the exit process for former criminal gang members. Which conditions appear to be important and what may constitute the enabling and inhibiting factors of an exit process? The study was based on qualitative semi-structured interviews with respondents who themselves have experience of a criminal lifestyle and gang affiliation, and with professionals in social work. Our theoretical approach is based on Helen Ebaugh’s definition of an exit process, labeling theories, strain theory and control theory. Said theories are usually an explanation for why an individual develops and remains in a criminal behavior. We used these theories in an opposite way, that is, as a model to explain how the way out of crime could look like.   The conclusion is that the process of leaving a criminal lifestyle and gang affiliation behind is complex. The criminal lifestyle means a marginalized position and limited resources linked to the conventional society. Throughout the process, the individual must, despite the difficulties, choose the legal options and be sustainable even if emotions like loneliness and disorientation arises. For individuals the way out of crime leads to a role change, to learn again. This indicates in our conclusions of the importance of including assistance in working with their criminal thinking patterns and behavior, orderly housing situation and livelihood as well as the importance of a supportive social network. Individuals who have been part of a criminal gang often have a unique support needs based on the environment they have been in, and not least by the sense of community and identity that the gang has meant to them.   Motivation and their willpower is portrayed as the most central means to cope with the exit process. The absence of one or more conditions increases the risk for the individual to fail while the access to conditions alone is not enough. The right conditions at the right time seems to appear as the key to generate a successful change process.

Asian Indian Americans are a highly successful subset of Asian Americans. According to a 2012 Pew Center report, this population has the highest level of degree attainment among Asian Americans as well as the highest median income among Asian Americans ("The Rise of Asian Americans," 2012). However, there is a cloak of invisibility surrounding this population. There is little research on how second-generation Asian Indian Americans navigate the expectations of academic excellence and cultural adherence in their relationships with their first-generation parents. There is limited knowledge and understanding of this population that is burdened by family expectations, community expectations, institutional expectations, and their own self-expectations of academic excellence. The paucity of research on this population creates the invisible minority where students’ needs may be ignored based on unfounded assumptions on part of the community and the institution. This phenomenological study adds to the sparse literature on Asian Indian Americans by exploring the intergenerational relationships of Asian Indian American undergraduate students in a narrowly focused area of academic choices and academic performance. This study examined students’ perceptions of the communication between first-generation parents and second-generation children who are currently enrolled at Southern State University. Further, this study examined the stress generated by the intergenerational relationships and the coping strategies employed by the students for dealing with the aforementioned stress. Findings from this study indicate that first-generation parents stress academic excellence and enrollment in certain majors based on their own experiences as new immigrants as well as to uphold the honor and prestige of the family. While the expectations of academic excellence from parents create stress for the students, the students remain grateful to their parents for instilling such values in them. However, the findings reveal that students felt stress from the expectation of excellence from the community, family, and institution to perform well. The findings of varying levels of intergenerational issues suggest that the parent-child relationships in this population were complex and non-linear. / text

Une Ligne de Produits Logiciels (LPL) supporte la gestion d’une famille de logiciels. Cette approche se caractérise par une réutilisation systématique des artefacts communs qui réduit le coût et le temps de mise sur le marché et augmente la qualité des logiciels. Cependant, une LPL exige un investissement initial coûteux. Certaines organisations qui ne peuvent pas faire face à un tel investissement, utilisent le « Clone-and-own » C&O pour construire et faire évoluer des familles de logiciels. Cependant, l'efficacité de cette pratique se dégrade proportionnellement à la croissance de la famille de produits, qui devient difficile à maintenir. Dans cette thèse, nous proposons une approche hybride qui utilise à la fois une LPL et l'approche C&O pour faire évoluer une famille de produits logiciels. Un mécanisme automatique d’identification des correspondances entre les « features » caractérisant les produits et les artéfacts logiciels, permet la migration des variantes de produits développées en C&O dans une LPL. L’originalité de ce travail est alors d’aider à la dérivation de nouveaux produits en proposant différents scenarii d’opérations C&O à effectuer pour dériver un nouveau produit à partir des features requis. Le développeur peut alors réduire ces possibilités en exprimant ses préférences (e.g. produits, artefacts) et en utilisant les estimations de coûts sur les opérations que nous proposons. Les nouveaux produits ainsi construits sont alors facilement intégrés dans la LPL. Nous avons étayé cette thèse en développant le framework SUCCEED (SUpporting Clone-and-own with Cost-EstimatEd Derivation) et l’avons appliqué à une étude de cas sur des familles de portails web. / A Software Product Line (SPL) manages commonalities and variability of a related software products family. This approach is characterized by a systematic reuse that reduces development cost and time to market and increases software quality. However, building an SPL requires an initial expensive investment. Therefore, organizations that are not able to deal with such an up-front investment, tend to develop a family of software products using simple and intuitive practices. Clone-and-own (C&O) is an approach adopted widely by software developers to construct new product variants from existing ones. However, the efficiency of this practice degrades proportionally to the growth of the family of products in concern, that becomes difficult to manage. In this dissertation, we propose a hybrid approach that utilizes both SPL and C&O to develop and evolve a family of software products. An automatic mechanism of identification of the correspondences between the features of the products and the software artifacts, allows the migration of the product variants developed in C&O in an SPL The originality of this work is then to help the derivation of new products by proposing different scenarios of C&O operations to be performed to derive a new product from the required features. The developer can then reduce these possibilities by expressing her preferences (e.g. products, artifacts) and using the proposed cost estimations on the operations. We realized our approach by developing SUCCEED, a framework for SUpporting Clone-and-own with Cost-EstimatEd Derivation. We validate our works on a case study of families of web portals.